


No Longer Home

by Kavi Leighanna (kleighanna)



Series: beauty, grace, punches in the face [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Time Travel, why we don't let tony play with weird things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-07 17:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6816661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kleighanna/pseuds/Kavi%20Leighanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is not her home, but it is the second chance at his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Longer Home

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: Steve and Maria end up time traveling back to 1946. Maria says to him that he should (not could, but should) stay. Angst (with a happy ending?)

They’ve been here four days. 

A Stark experiment gone wrong mixed with some Asgardian magic and she and Steve had been transported to 1946. His time. His element. And Steve had jumped in with gusto. 

So while she’d been working with Howard Stark - and she is not thinking of the implications of that bizarre twist - he’s been galavanting around with Peggy Carter. 

Maria is a strong woman. In fact, she’s often considered the strongest of women, at least the ones she’s normally around. But she knows that she cannot hold a candle to Peggy Carter. She can’t hate the woman either, not when Maria admires everything she worked for and everything she did. 

So when it comes time to go home, when she and Stark finally figure out how to reverse engineer Tony’s experiment, Maria steels herself for what she has to do now. 

“Steve,” she calls. He and Peggy are working on hand to hand on Stark’s lawn. He’s in his element, and she’s wily. But he looks over the minute she calls, his smile wide. 

“Maria. Are you coming?”

She folds her arms over her chest. Defensive, maybe, but she figures she’s entitled. She’s in love with him, has been for months, and she has to let him go. “No. I have to go back to New York.” 

It’s Peggy that calls back, “You figured it out!”

“We worked backwards,” Maria says neutrally as they approach. She feels the clench of her stomach as she steels herself against the conversation that comes. “Hey, listen. You should stay.” 

Steve blinks at her. “What?” 

She has to reach out to him, brushes her fingers against his arm. “Here. You should stay here.” She sucks in a deep breath, slowly, quietly. “You had this time robbed from you. Now you get it back.”

He looks stricken. Utterly poleaxed. 

“It’s fine,” she says, summoning a smile. “We have a surplus of superheroes back in 2016.” She turns her smile on Peggy. “And you guys have unfinished business.” 

“Maria-” 

“It what you want,” she says, quiet but sure. “You should take it.”

She turns on her heel and feels bitterly vindicated when Steve doesn’t follow. She’d known the choice he’d made, even before she offered it to him. 

“Alright Hill, she’s ready to go. And a beaut. You sure you have to take the plans with you? You could write it down, you know. Think of the possibilities.”

This is even ground and she smirks. “The possibilities are the reason I’m taking them with me, Stark.”

He glances around. “Just you? Shouldn’t you have a Rogers-shaped shadow?”

Maria ignores the way her heart squeezes. “He’s-”

“Right here.” 

Maria lets her eyes flutter closed. She won’t have to see Howard after this, never met the man. He can see this split second of vulnerability. 

“Agent Carter-”

“Agent Hill.” 

Maria’s mouth snaps closed. Stark’s eyebrow rises. 

“While I… appreciate what you are trying to do, Steve doesn’t belong here.”

“Of course he does. It’s his time.” 

“It _was_  his time.”

And when Maria turns, there’s a calmness about Peggy, but also a sympathy. Maria knows it’s also commiseration. She knows exactly what it means, to be in love with Steve, but that doesn’t mean that Steve hovering over her shoulder isn’t a compelling picture. 

“He’s spent too much time in the future,” she says and steps in, lays a hand on Maria’s arm. “He has a life there. A future. A purpose. He wouldn’t have that here. He can’t.” 

“Agent Carter-”

“Maria.” 

And Peggy she could take. Peggy she could argue with. But Steve… Steve she can’t. 

“Maria, I-” He glances around, closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again they’re determined, sure, a look that she’s seen on his face too many times to count. “Can we have the room.”

Maria will never forget the look on Stark’s face as Peggy yanked him out of the room by his ear. 

“Look. I know… We both know Peggy meant a lot to me.” 

“She was your first love.”

Steve’s smile is a little rueful. “Exactly, Maria. My first love. The woman I wanted to love; an idea.”

She is not the type to swoon, but her breath backs up in her lungs. 

“But you’re not an idea. You’re real.” 

She lets him cup her cheek. 

“You’re the future. You’re in the future. My future, because that’s where I want to be.” 

“Steve-”

“I love you. You know that. I loved Peggy, but Maria, I love you.”

The air shakes when it comes out of her lungs, harsh and painful. “You could though. Stay.”

And because he’s Steve, a giant sap at the best of times, he smiles at her and says. “Not without you.”

“Okay,” she breathes after a moment of searching his face. That steel determination hasn’t shifted, but neither has the way he looks at her, worshipful and glorious. “Okay.” 

He reaches for her hand and she lets him take it, lets him tug her over to the little piece of machinery that will take them back to the twenty-first century. And, together, they go home. 


End file.
